School-bus Monitor Molested More Kids, Detectives Say

An Orange County school-bus monitor was arrested Tuesday on two new charges of molesting students, the same day the School Board voted to suspend him without pay.

The new cases against David Mosquera involve year-old accusations that schools Superintendent Ron Blocker admitted last week were not passed on to police by school-district officials.

Two sisters at the source of the latest charges were among the earliest victims, who complained to district employees in January 2004 that the 71-year-old monitor had been touching them beneath their underwear, according to Orange County sheriff's records.

Mosquera will be suspended pending the outcome of the investigation, School Board members decided unanimously Tuesday.

Three other children also complained to school officials in the past about Mosquera, but no charges will be filed in those cases, officials said.

"Their parents don't want to put the kids through the trauma of opening up everything again," sheriff's sex-crimes Sgt. Richard Mankewich said Tuesday.

The Sheriff's Office continues to investigate who at the school district knew about the allegations against Mosquera, yet failed to notify police, Mankewich said.

The controversy about the school district's failure to report suspicions of sex crimes against children began April 15, when a 13-year-old special-needs student said he had been molested by Mosquera.

A video camera on the boy's school bus taped the incident, which detectives said clearly showed Mosquera molesting the boy.

Arrested on six counts of lewd and lascivious molestation and two counts of lewd exposure, Mosquera was released on $5,000 bail from the Orange County Jail. He said he was innocent.

In the cases leading to Mosquera's arrest Tuesday, the two sisters told investigators that he began touching them in a sexual manner in late 2003, possibly in December.

On at least one occasion, the girls said, Mosquera encouraged a 12-year-old boy on the bus to spank one of them. On another occasion, the sisters said, Mosquera grabbed them both and spanked them while he laughed.

On Tuesday, Mosquera was admitted to Florida Hospital East after complaining of chest pain shortly after his arrest, according to the Sheriff's Office. He is charged with two more counts of lewd battery on a juvenile.

The Sheriff's Office said Orange County corrections workers would guard Mosquera while he remained in the hospital.

Sex-crimes detectives found complaints concerning "numerous other possible victims," when they searched Mosquera's personnel file at the school-district offices, according to the arrest record released Tuesday.

Instead of disciplining Mosquera for those complaints, the school district assigned him several times to different bus routes while conducting its own administrative reviews of the complaints.

While admitting it erred, the school district recently faulted the Orange-Osceola State Attorney's Office for not informing it that Mosquera had been charged last year with striking a child on one of its buses.

Questions remain about another case in which the daughter of Creole-speaking parents complained to the Sheriff's Office that she was molested in January 2004 but no charges were filed. What happened to that investigation could not be learned Tuesday.

Mosquera , a former New York City resident, began working for the Orange County school district in March 2001.